To kick off the session, I asked them what kind of films they liked. The question was greeted with an enthusiastic cacophonous response, and the general consensus went for The Matrix or anything starring Jackie Chan.

Foreign movies were out, especially those with subtitles. Long movies were out. Old movies were out. Black-and-white movies were definitely out. Old, long, black-and-white foreign movies with subtitles... well, they just wouldn't do at all.

I smiled and tried not to look like a patronising middle-aged misery guts as I explained that such an approach meant they were excluding themselves from some of the greatest cinema ever created.
No-one was convinced.

I'd taken advice from their form teacher prior to the talk and was delighted to learn that my captive audience loved martial arts movies. Lo, what should appear on screen but a sensational clip
from Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai.

As they watched the action, I watched them. Bathed in the light of Asakazu Nakai's mouth-watering cinematography, I could see their eyes light up like little beacons. No-one spoke but there were a few audible gasps and, from one vocal soul, a shout of "Yeh!"

When the lights went up, I informed them, as casually as possible, that they had just enjoyed a clip from a 48-year-old black-and-white three-hour-plus subtitled classic made in Japan. I gave up the title to a collective look of puzzlement.

On informing them that it had been remade into The Magnificent Seven, I wasn't surprised to learn that they hadn't heard of that, either. Or Yul Brynner. Or Steve McQueen.

Today's kids tend to grow up on a diet of tasteless summer blockbusters, so it's rare to see them embracing older movies, especially at the pictures.

Yet all is not lost. Last week at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, I caught up with Louis Malle's Lift to the Scaffold – part of a season dedicated to Jeanne Moreau for her 80th birthday. And, guess what: a healthy proportion of the audience was comprised of young people, by which I mean cinemagoers under 30.

How lucky that the claustrophobic marketplace cluttered with mindless modern releases is occasionally enlivened by a reissue of a much-loved (or even long-forgotten) screen treasure.

François Truffaut's Jules et Jim came out last month along with Let's Get Lost, a 20-year-old tribute to jazz genius Chet Baker. Coming up are Billy Wilder's bittersweet The Apartment, Kurosawa's Ikiru and, maybe the best of the lot, Sergio Leone's majestic spaghetti masterpiece The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

Truffaut. Wilder. Kurosawa. Leone. All masters of their art. All dead. Yet I'm sure each one of them would have appreciated the post-film chatter about Malle's 1958 feature debut, just as they would have absorbed the passion that filled the theatre.

In the past, reissues were considered to be lazy schedule fillers. Now they are applauded for reintroducing class and intelligence onto
a circuit crowded with no-brainers often made by directors who really should know better.